Category: Transport and Industry

The main purpose of roads is to provide systematic routes to people, animals, and vehicles. In art, they play a vital role for paintings, typically as a pathway towards the landscape. Hence, many landscape paintings used to feature roads in them. To address poor road conditions, railways were established as a means of providing a convenient and fast mode of transportation. It was the well-known...

From the 16th century onwards, small workplaces with their equipment used to be featured in the paintings in the Netherlands. One good example depicts alchemists working in research laboratories. During this period, scenes of everyday life were a common art theme. Then, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, numerous paintings showing workshops of professionals such as curling stone makers,...

Though there were tales of almost successful flying efforts from Icarus and Daedalus using unnatural wings to elude imprisonment in the myths, the first real successful flight attempt occurred in the late 18th century by a hot air balloon. Painting was used to document some of these extraordinary initial flights and also in the mid-nineteenth century. In the 20th century, aircrafts played a...